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Sarajevo Tunnel: The Tunnel of Hope

Five meters below the
runway of Sarajevo's airport runs a short stretch of tunnel that was dug
out during the Siege of Sarajevo to bring supplies to the cut-off city.
For four years this 800-meter long tunnel was the besieged city’s only
connection to the outside world, and its life support.

In the
spring of 1992, when Serbian forces encircled the city of Sarajevo, the
capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and began bombarding it with
artillery and sniper fire, some three hundred thousand citizens found
themselves trapped within its perimeter. The Serbs had blocked all
access roads to the city, cutting supplies of food and medicine. They
also cut off the city's water, electricity and heating. With people
starving, the UN negotiated a deal with the Serb nationalists and
secured the airport so that humanitarian aid could be flown in. But the
merge supplies were not enough for the city’s population.
Photo credit: rich white/Flickr

Beyond
the airport, lay Bosnian territory and freedom. But Sarajevo's citizens
just couldn’t walk into the airport —technically a neutral venue under
the UN— and then slip out of the city into the adjoining suburb of
Bosnian-held Butmir, on the other side of the airport. Because all
around the city, Serbian snipers had taken up positions in high rises
and kept eye on the main street that lead to the airport. Through the
sights on their rifles, they watched for movements and didn’t hesitate
to pull the trigger. More than two hundred people were killed on this
street and a thousand more wounded, earning the street the name “Sniper
Alley”.
A Bosnian civil engineer, Nedžad Branković, drew up the
plans for the tunnel that would connect the two suburbs held by Bosnian
troops —Dobrinja, lying inside the Serbian siege lines, and Butmir on
the outside. Construction of the tunnel began on January 1993, and
continued round the clock for the next six months. Workers, working in
8-hour shifts, started digging from both ends using shovels and picks,
until the two ends met at the center, underneath the Sarajevo airport
runway. Originally, the work was carried by men from the Bosnian army,
but later miners from central Bosnia were brought it. These men were
paid in cigarettes —one packet a day. Cigarettes were scarce, costly and
were highly prized items in bartering.
The tunnel was entered
through a nondescript house near the airport belonging to a man named
Bajro Kolar. The opposite entrance on the Dobrinja side was hidden
inside a garage of an apartment building. Everyday between three and
four thousand people and thirty tons of various goods passed through the
tunnel. Initially, the supplies had to be carried by hand or on the
backs of soldiers, until a railway track was laid with wagons pushed by
men. Eventually, an oil pipeline, electrical cables and a telephone line
was laid through the tunnel. An electric pump bailed out water that
frequently accumulated inside, sometime up to waist height. The tunnel
itself is five feet tall. Because there was no ventilation, the air was
stale and fetid, forcing everybody to wear a mask.
When the Serbs
learnt about the tunnel in 1994 they tried to destroy it by intensifying
their bombing in the area where they presumed the entrances were. After
the war ended, the tunnel fell into disrepair and most of it collapsed
and got flooded. But thanks to the Bajro Kolar, through whose house the
tunnel was entered on the Butmir side, a short section of the tunnel was
preserved and a museum was built around it.
Today, it is one of
the most visited sites of the Bosnian capital, with hundreds of daily
visitors. Strangely, the Sarajevo Tunnel Museum has remained a fully
private undertaking with no government support despite its historical
importance.
Bajro Kolar’s house, now the Sarajevo Tunnel Museum. Photo credit: csw27/Flickr
Photo credit: leiris202/Flickr
Photo credit: Iain Hinchliffe/Flickr
Photo credit: leiris202/Flickr
The walls of the museum still bear bullet holes from the war. Photo credit: Shiraz Chakera/Flickr
The tunnel's south entrance, outside the siege lines. Photo credit: BiHVolim/Wikimedia
Close-up of the tunnel entrance. Photo credit: Damien Smith/Flickr
Sources: www.balcanicaucaso.org / NY Times / Dark Tourism
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Sarajevo Tunnel: The Tunnel of Hope
Reviewed by photofun4ucom
on
April 03, 2018
Rating: 5